Sunday, July 04, 2010

Toys VS Humans

Boy, drawing 3 dimensional cartoon toys is enough of a challenge. People ask me all the time whether I think life drawing is useful to cartoonists and animators and my answer is a hesitant - yes. Under certain conditions.

the shapes in real life are so much more intricate than 2 dimensional cartoon characters that the gap between the 2 is immense. It's very hard to bridge the 2 disciplines in practice.In my 30 years in the business I've only met one cartoonist that has been able to make real applicable connections between cartooning and life drawing and that's Jim Smith. So it's not impossible, just severely rare.

I think if the way life drawing was taught in cartoon schools was modified so that there was a way to apply the very general principles that life and cartoons have in common, then it could be useful. I think you need steps in between cartoons and actual biological organisms. Cartoon toys are a good middle step. Toys wrap simple(r) cartoony shapes around in true 3 dimensional space. They demonstrate form, material and perspective in a way that is more readily applicable (and understandable) to animation.

Chloe is threatening to draw some UFC fighters. I'm sure those will put mine to shame, but I'll show them to you anyway when she does.

Hi John!I've been without the internet for like a week, so I'm just now catching up on recent posts.

It's funny that you talk about this, because I checked out an anatomy book and have been doodling from it in lieu of having internet resources.

It's kind of weird, but I actually think having a basic understanding of the skull has sort of been helpful with doing caricatures. Before I never thought much about it, but it seems like a LOT of inexperienced cartoonists (myself included) forget some features like the jaw/teeth coming forth at an angle, and that blasted space between the face and the ears. I wish I had looked at bones forever ago because now less-cartoony human faces is slowly becoming easier to draw spontaneously.

However, all those interior bones and all but a few muscles don't seem very helpful with cartooning knowledge. I can't think of very many instances in which a cartoonist might need to know how to draw a coccyx. Sure is a good word, though.

So while I don't think I'm going to obsessively figure draw for years, I think it is probably a good idea for starting cartoonists to at least know what the heck they're looking at. However, I wish I also had some cute classic toys to draw from, but you can't get those from the library. Ha ha.Have a good one!

I will I will! I've been distracted by babies and motown and lord of the rings and ligers. but you've given me motivation to put some effort in now. I'll have to ignore your great Brocks to come up with my own solutions.

This is somewhat of a tangent, but I think most artists who excel at drawing cartoony characters aren't as adept at drawing the realistic or superhero ones. I believe the reverse to be true also. Of course there are exceptions, but generally speaking, that seems to be the norm.

Frazetta is a common example of not only an adept figurative painter, but a wonderful caricaturist and funny animal cartoonist, to boot.

Frazetta's unfinished portrait of his wife is an amazing meld of his stylistic tendencies and an attempt at working from life. My buddy Sam does wonderful things from living references, mutated by his cartoon, dare I say it, genius...

I see why you think a lot of life drawing might not be time well spent, and in a previous post you mentioned what a waste years of sketchy scribbles are.

I think though, like Geneva says, that learning anatomy and how to see and capture form can only be beneficial. I guess it's like you say, if they taught proper draftsmanship and anatomy that'd be better.

As for sketching, it might not make me better at construction and specific cartooning skills, but just the act of observing has gotta be good for ones personal repertoire of life's little nuances, right?